Available recordings of the Liszt-Beethoven transcriptions are sparse whether recorded separately or as a cycle. Glenn Gould recorded scintillating 5th and 6th Symphony performances in the late 1960s. It is a pity he did not commit a full set to tape. Of the complete cycles, there are only three. The first was recorded by French pianist Cyprian Katsaris for Teldec in the 1980s and later re-released by Warner Group in 2006.
Contemporaneously, Harmonia Mundi released a cycle in the late 1980s-early 1990s performed by Jean-Louis Haguenauer, Georges Pludermacher, Alain Planes, Michel Dalberto, and Jean-Claude Pennetier (the Nineth Symphony transcription being for two pianos). These performances were assembled into a box released in 1995. During the same period, English pianist Leslie Howard recorded all of Liszt's piano music for Hyperion. The Beethoven transcriptions made a tidy subset to this mammoth undertaking, being boxed separately and released in 1995.
Shortly before Howard completed his Liszt survey, Naxos began its own program for recording all of Liszt's piano music; using different pianists for each release (the label is currently doing the same for the complete sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti). Wisely, Naxos chose a single, singular pianist in Konstantin Scherbakov to perform the Liszt-Beethoven Cycle. Scherbakov completed his cycle in 2006 at which time it was boxed.
The Naxos Liszt-Beethoven Symphony set is completed with Liszt: Beethoven - Symphony No. 9 (arranged for 2 pianos) (Liszt Complete Piano Music, Vol. 28) with pianists Leon McCawley and Ashley Wass. The two releases make for a most complete survey of Liszt's Beethoven Orchestral transcriptions.
Ludwig van Beethoven / Franz Liszt
Beethoven Symphonies Nos. 1-9 Transcribed by Liszt
Konstantin Scherbakov
Naxos
2006
Konstantin Scherbakov was born in Barnaul, Siberia in 1963. He has previously recorded the standard Russian repertoire for Naxos including Godowsky, Medtner, Rachmaninov, Scriabin, Shostakovich, and Tchaikovsky. Scherbakov possesses a muscular, aggressive piano style that recalls the great Ukrainian pianist Sviatoslav Richter.
Scherbakov's performance style is well suited for the Liszt transcriptions, giving them a virile life of their own. Scherbakov's set of Liszt transcribed Beethoven Symphonies was originally released as separate discs comprising five volumes of Naxos' Liszt Complete Piano Music. The cycle was released in the following order:
Volume 15, LISZT: Beethoven Symphonies Nos. 2 and 5 (1999)
Volume 18, LISZT: Beethoven Symphonies Nos. 1 and 3 (2001)
Volume 19, LISZT: Beethoven Symphonies Nos. 4 and 6 (2003)
Volume 21, LISZT: Beethoven Symphonies No. 9 (2004)
Volume 23, LISZT: Beethoven Symphonies Nos. 7 and 8 (2006)
Box Set: LISZT: Beethoven Symphonies Nos. 1-9 (2006)
Article comments